


in the velvet of a summer night

by cerebella



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Gen, Kid Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-08
Updated: 2017-10-08
Packaged: 2019-01-10 17:15:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12303822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cerebella/pseuds/cerebella
Summary: It felt like she had been half-asleep since the mid-eighties, like she was only now beginning to stir, and see the world for what it was: a rich and lively place.





	in the velvet of a summer night

Toshiya proposed to Hiroko for the first time in the dire summer of 1985. She had gone away to think about it, and was deeply upset that she would be telling him no—after all, Hiroko was only eighteen, and she didn’t even know how to use a laundry machine yet—but when she had finally found Toshiya that same afternoon, he seemed to have already forgotten that he’d proposed in the first place.

“Which is good,” Hiroko had said to Minako-sensei, afterwards. “I didn’t want to say no anyway.”

But Minako-sensei clearly did not agree; she slashed the tires on Toshiya’s van and Hiroko didn’t get to see him until two weeks later, which was how long it took him to get the tires replaced.

The next time Toshiya would propose, Minako-sensei wouldn’t be there to disable him—she would be dancing in America already, and France after that, and then Russia. Hiroko had graduated high-school, and she was taking a gap year to make sure she would have enough money to pay for university. During this time she would work extra hours at her parents’ onsen, although she still couldn’t figure out a washing machine, and so she would inevitably end up sitting for hours in one of the small, hidden gardens, with a scrub board and a milky bar of soap.

Hiroko turned nineteen that year. She would only stay in touch with her high school friends for a couple of months after that, being the busy young woman that she was. She would spend her college fund on things that seemed far more important.

She would gain weight; she would stop drinking. But the weight seemed to pile on no matter what she did.

It would take Toshiya some five months to notice, but he already had a ring, and he’d had practice before. They would have to act fast. The first time he’d proposed, Hiroko had only been a girl. But now she was a mother, and now she said _yes_.

 

*

 

Mari turned out to be difficult in ways her mother could have never anticipated. She was a callous little sprite, who decided not to walk until she hit the grand old age of two. When they had taken her to a pediatrician, she became sick of her oppression whilst being forced to sit still in a waiting room, and very sullenly walked out of the room all on her own.

In the end the doctor decided Mari was more indolent than anything else, which had rather annoyed Hiroko until she realised this meant Mari hadn’t been diagnosed with something terrible—it was only then that she had a first glimpse of how painful it could be, having a little one and loving her so much. How terrible it would be if Hiroko managed to lose even the tiniest part of her. The world suddenly seemed such a dangerous place for young girls that at night Hiroko often wondered how she had survived being a child at all. Back then it must have been easy; now it seemed you could die of it, of being a girl.

She thanked the gods, then, when the next one was a boy. When Yuuri was born he was small and pink, and without her glasses on Hiroko thought he looked like a slice of watermelon. When it got hot during the summer, it was difficult to resist bundling him in thick, white cotton and holding him as close as she usually did. Hiroko’s only solace was the cold, black night, when she could righteously wrap him up in years-old bedding and press their cheeks together. Her child was blessed with a face as soft and wobbly as a poached egg.

Late at night when the rest of the world was sleeping soundly and Yuuri, for whatever reason, would not join them, she would sit in the garden, tapping his nose as if he were a cat and she was scolding him, watching him scrunch up his nose and rear back clumsily. In truth it would be years before she could bring herself to criticize him, and even then she would hardly ever make it beyond giving him vague looks of bewilderment from the other side of the room.

For six years she had walked Mari to and from school, waking up early every single day to carry her out of bed and down to breakfast, and tomorrow morning she would do it again—but here in the dark, amongst the cicadas and the stars, she felt for a brief moment as though her youngest was the only one she’d ever loved.

In that same moment, Yuuri finally fell asleep. And he would sleep all night and then all day, before waking up on Mari’s legs on the couch where he’d been deposited, finally grabbing the index finger that Mari had been trying for the past hour to get him to curl his hand around.

“Be careful,” said Hiroko, walking past. It was more of a reflex than anything else. Her youngest would burst into tears at the slightest provocation. Yuuri only looked up at his sister’s face with a look of total indifference. He didn’t seem to realize that they were holding hands.

In all seriousness it was like keeping an alien in the house. Calling it family. Mari didn’t feel the same dizzying surge of adoration that her mother did whenever she was faced with Yuuri’s guileless daifuku face. Even Toshiya didn’t seem to fully understand her complete and utter infatuation. Mother’s love was an arcane magic. Maybe a million years ago it had been absolutely necessary—that whenever a mother might look upon her child, she would evolve into a whole other kind of beast until she was certain her little one was safe—but then evolution had never taken into consideration that a child might be darling all on its own, bewitching even without the added help of chemicals clouding the eye of the beholder.

And there was Yuuri, always Yuuri, gazing out at the vivid, rippling blue of the ocean with rare interest, his head tucked against Hiroko’s shoulder where she held him safely in her arms—not wanting to see him burn, she kept him in the shade of her wide-brimmed sunhat—and it felt like she had been half-asleep since the mid-eighties, like she was only now beginning to stir, and see the world for what it was: a rich and lively place. If the planet tilted on its axis she believed it was only because it swooned at the sight of such a lovely child.

The sun blazed overhead, casting over the beach a golden light that only seemed to exist in provinces. The ocean glittered and was hard to look at. Yuuri uncurled a fraction and seemed to reach out, trying to grasp at the sea. An alien indeed. A creature who thought the whole world was within his reach.

Hiroko kissed him on the cheek and brought him a little closer.

 

*

 

There were no more children after that. Hiroko had to be careful now—having four mouths to feed, it always felt as if they were spending slightly more than they should—and poor Yuuri, although he asked for very little, needed all that Hiroko had to give and more.

And then when he came home, having seen more of the world than Hiroko could dream of, and looking like it had cleaved him in half—Hiroko wondered what was left that she could give him.

That night snow blew into Hasetsu, for reasons no meteorologist could understand. All they could glean was that it seemed to have arrived by northern winds. The town was left dumbfounded; the snow was gone within the week. But it was lovely for a little while—soft layers of frosting on every rooftop, glittering stalactites hanging from the street lamps—although it upset Hiroko’s poor flowerbeds very much.

During this pulse of wintry bliss, a strange man arrived—he was statuesque, impervious to the cold, brazenly wealthy. He was all at once totally foreign and rather familiar. He was looking for something.

Bizarrely, Hiroko already knew his name.

**Author's Note:**

> tried to write a fic about hiroko and victor being the best!!! of friends, accidentally got my dick stuck in the ceiling fan


End file.
